No one would have blamed Joe Sharp if his mind wasn't entirely on last year's Keeneland April Horses of All Ages Sale while he was there.
That morning, Callie Witt, an exercise rider for his barn, died from injuries suffered in a training accident. Her parents were flying in to meet Sharp, and he didn't plan on staying at the sale for long.
Hip 1 through the sale was Scarlet Fusion, a two-time winning son of Curlin with a deep page. Sharp landed the colt for $110,000 on behalf of owners Brad Grady and Carl R. Moore Management, and he got on with the rest of his day.
Scarlet Fusion proved worth the brief appearance, climbing the conditions ladder through the second half of 2022, and kicking off his 2023 campaign with his first stakes victory in the Grade 3 John B. Connally Turf Cup Stakes on Jan. 28 at Sam Houston Race Park. The win held a fair bit of extra weight in the Sharp barn.
“He was the only horse we purchased, so it's always held a bit of special energy for me, because of all we'd gone through as a barn that day, and then to acquire him and for him to turn out to be a good horse has been kind of neat,” Sharp said. “He's been a fun horse, and there's a lot of people that are pulling for him.”
A product of the Stonestreet Farm breeding program, Scarlet Fusion is out of the stakes-placed French Deputy mare Scarlet Tango, making him a sibling to Grade 1 winners Tara's Tango and Visionaire, as well as Grade 3 winners Scarlet Strike and Madison's Luna.
Sharp said browsing the sales with Grady and Moore tends to be a collaborative process, especially in racing-age sales, where buyers tend to have past performance to lean on to determine what a horse might be capable of achieving in their own barn. Scarlet Fusion was consigned at the Keeneland April sale by Eaton Sales, agent.
If Sharp could polish up the colt's resume to match his page, he surmised the return on investment could be significant. Furthermore, Scarlet Fusion had won on both dirt and turf, giving Sharp some options on his future.
“His pedigree on the bottom side, he has a stallion's pedigree, so that was super attractive,” Sharp said. “If you could get him to take some steps forward, you would have potentially residual value down the road. He would obviously have to take some significant steps forward, but based on what we've seen he has, and he looks like he'll continue to do so.”
Scarlet Fusion had previously raced as a homebred for Stonestreet, which campaigned the horse in partnership with e Five Racing, with Mark Casse handling the training duties. After he got the horse in his barn, Sharp said the colt's background with reputable connections made the transition to his program, and the feeling-out process to see where he might succeed, a simple one.
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If you appreciate our work, you can support us by subscribing to our Patreon stream. Learn more.“We go over them, but especially when they're coming from a great outfit like Mark Casse's, you know the horse has been well cared for,” Sharp said. “It's pretty much just evaluating them. I breeze a lot of my own horses, and you see if there's anything you can pick up on that you think they might be better suited for, or a little something here or there that could be altered, like distance or equipment. You're trying to take care of the horse and let them mature into themselves, and that's what we've done with him. Nothing drastic, just training him straightforward and letting him develop himself.”
Though the long-term goal was to develop Scarlet Fusion into a potential stallion prospect, the barn has taken a patient route to get there. After joining Sharp's shedrow, he spent most of the year racing at the allowance optional claiming level at Churchill Downs, highlighted by a 3 3/4-length win on Nov. 2.
That race was at 1 1/2 miles on the dirt, and Sharp said that much of the time spent racing at Churchill was used to tinker with finding the horse's ideal racing conditions. He'd been showing talent in the mornings, but the trainer said that began to translate over to the races when he removed the colt's blinkers and ran him long.
Scarlet Fusion's first stakes try came at the end of his 2022 campaign, where he finished third in the Tinsel Stakes at Oaklawn Park.
His 5-year-old campaign saw Scarlet Fusion face his biggest test to date in his first start, and he earned his biggest win. In the Connally, Scarlet Fusion settled in mid-pack under jockey Adam Bezchizza in the 1 1/2-mile turf race, and got up just in time to win by three-quarters of a length.
This year's Keeneland April Selected Horses of Racing Age Sale takes place Sunday, April 30.
The post Keeneland’s April All-Stars: Scarlet Fusion Provides A Memorable Victory For Sharp’s Barn appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
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